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User blog:Ireallydontcare123456789/Pac-Man Licensing Fiasco 2: The New Adventures
In a previous blogpost - The 2006 Pac-Man Licensing Fiasco - I talked about how the rights to Ms. Pac-Man were turned over to General Computer Corporation in 2006, and Namco had to pay G.C.C. every time they used the character or any of her games. Believe it or not, that contract was supposed to end just a few days ago. Namco was about to get the Ms. Pac rights back permanently, without copyright issues getting in the way. And that all came crumbling down, from a company every single video game fan despises. This company is AtGames. You know them from scamming you out of $20 on a falsely advertised Pac-Man console. *THAT* Atgames. Right before this contract that has been plaguing the Pac-Man franchise was about to end, AtGames sent a mini Ms. Pac-Man arcade machine to a "Curran" (I believe this is Kevin Curran, one of the original 1981 Ms. Pac devs). They then convinced the GCC team to grant them the "license" to produce the Ms. Pac machine...but they didn't say anything to Namco, and AtGames didn't even have the Pac-Man rights anymore. This wasn't GCC's fault. Keep in mind that AtGames had already released Namco-licensed Pac-Man products. Why would they think anything of some stupid Arcade1UP wannabe? It makes sense to just license it and move on... Now here's where things get interesting. After showing Curran the machine, AtGames asked to BUY the royalty interest of Ms. Pac-Man from GCC, for god knows how much money. The worst game company in the universe, buying one of the greatest video games of all time. My god. So. What happened? Truthfully, we...don't know yet. AtGames claims they DID acquire the royalty. GCC has said nothing. Namco STILL has no understanding what the fuck is even going on. And even if AtGames DID buy this royalty, they STILL can't do anything with it, because they wouldn't be able to release anything under the Pac-Man name anyway (Namco's still a required party for that). This is a court case that was filed less than a week ago. Everything will be answered in due time, and I'll update this post overtime to reflect that. This could go down as one of the most horrifying things in the entire fucking copyright system. As a PSA to everyone: do NOT buy anything AtGames-branded. Maybe don't even buy anything Ms. Pacman-related for a while. Root for Namco to win this case, and get the rights back to something they should've owned for the past 13 years. There's nothing we can really do physically, but the information needs to be out there. I shouldn't be using a Wikia for something like this, but I think its VERY important that Pac-fans know about this and are aware of it. (and hey, we're branded as "FANDOM" now, right?) (Information was sourced from this video originally, but since then the full court document has been posted here. I haven't made any guesswork here like I did on the previous post - this is seriously, verbatim, what's going on right now...) UPDATE 9/26/2019: AtGames has released some stupid press release thing claiming they have aquired "Ms. PAC-MAN-related rights". This is still GCC's rights only, thus the suspicious "related". They also mention a game called "Pac-Baby" (Baby Pac-Man?), which they...say is actually Jr. Pac-Man? Great job, you don't even know anything about what you just fucking bought. The most disgusting part of this page is this quote: "As part of our ongoing initiative to be caretakers of important cultural touchstones, we are privileged to gain these valuable rights ." AtGames has NO care for anything they've ever released, and they only bought the Ms. Pac-Man """rights""" in attempt to fuck over Namco for not letting them release some garbage arcade machine. Keep in mind that Namco WAS about to get the rights back before AtGames snuck in last minute, making it HARDER for this "important cultural touchstone" to ever be seen again. Obviously, this press release is still mostly a bullshit lie. Even if they had GCC's rights, they most certainly don't have Namco's. Namco still has the upper hand in this case, no matter what AtGames says. All hope is not lost yet... As an exciting side note, AtGames is now being sued by Walgreen's as well. This is a completely unrelated thing, but hopefully its another opportunity for AtGames to get completely torn to shreds, as they deserve. :) UPDATE 11/1/2019: After taking literal ages, AtGames has released their response to Namco regarding their submitted court document (thanks for wasting money on all these documents, Madlittlepixel). And to be honest? I can barely understand the damn thing. All they really say is that Namco is only suing them in order to "punish" them for buying the Ms. Pac-Man rights, which...yeah, was pretty clear from the beginning. Obviously that's their point, and Namco can legally persue that, just as AtGames can pointlessly buy a contract from some idiot game programmers from 1981. Really, the only notable thing here is an e-mail which Namco sent out when they first learned that AtGames bought the royalty rights. In it, they write: "AtGames has the opportunity to preserve its current relationship ... with Bandai Namco, so long as AtGames complies with Bandai Namco’s request, i.e. that AtGames rescinds whatever offer it has proposed to GCC relative to assignment of the agreement between Bandai Namco and them, and refrains from any other efforts to interfere with the contractual relationship between Bandai Namco and the GCC successors. If that commitment is not forthcoming by close of business today , BNEA will immediately terminate its current license agreements with AtGames, and will permanently remove AtGames as a partner with which it conducts business." Then they hilariously follow up with: "In the meantime, to help AtGames make its decision, we take this opportunity to reiterate that, should AtGames acquire GCC’s interest in Ms. PAC-MAN, pursuant to current agreement with GCC, Bandai Namco can ensure that '''AtGames investment will be useless'. AtGames can be promised that continued actions will be taken by Bandai Namco to ensure that there is zero income stream delivered pursuant that agreement, as has already been contemplated and decided by Bandai Namco, even prior to AtGames involvement in the situation."'' To summarize, AtGames will earn literally nothing from Ms. Pac-Man, and Namco will go out of their way to make sure that's the case. Which effectively means that if AtGames doesn't somehow lose the rights in court, Ms. Pac will disappear forever, outside of dumb loophole handheld games and whatever else. That's been the reality for over a decade; its really not surprising. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the very few non-loophole versions of the game left (iOS, Android, Xbox, etc.) are taken down soon, as money still went to GCC over those. However, now we know that Namco has completely terminated their contract with AtGames...and by that logic, why the hell did they release a new Pac-Man console LAST WEEK!? This console HAS to violate some sort of copyright infringement. Hopefully Namco catches this before the trial starts, as this alone could probably make them win the case. UPDATE 11/20/19...and a bad one... After denying Namco a preliminary injunction, the court has claimed that Namco is is unlikely to win the case, with AtGames being in favor. So basically, this is the end. From my gut feeling, I'm almost certain Pac-Man as a whole (not just the Mrs.) will be over from this. Namco isn't gonna continue a barely-selling franchise when every element of it could just be stripped away by greedy American corporations. Unless Namco has a complete turnaround in court...Pac-Man is gone. Is there still a chance this could work out? Maybe. But don't get your hopes up. And just as a reminder: since 2002, U.S. companies have been fighting over rights they can't use for a fucking yellow sphere from the 80s wearing lipstick. Its just a title to have - "I partially own a vaguely important video game now!" - that they can use to impress investors or something. And no one will just fucking give or sell the rights to Namco - the only company who deserves them. The court case should be next month. AtGames filed a counter-lawsuit against Namco as well though, presumably just to stall time, so who knows when this will really be over... UPDATE 12/17/19: So maybe my last update was a *bit* melodramatic. Maybe. I honestly don't even know anymore. What I do know is that tomorrow, the Initial Case Mgmt. Conference (ICMC) is taking place between Bandai Namco and AtGames. In an ICMC, all of the parties meet with the judge together for the first time. In stupid copyright cases like this, its possible everything could be settled here; but that's only if AtGames gives up their royalty rights. Will AtGames give back something that they obtained through extremely shady and possibly illegal business practices? Or will they refuse to give up an agreement that has literally no benefit on anyone's behalf? Only time will tell...if even, because sometimes this stuff isn't even made public until ages later... UPDATE 12/19/19: Surprise! AtGames *didn't* just give the rights back yesterday. Shocker, I know. And the trial will start on...April 26, 2021. Literally a year and four months from now. Whoopee... It is stated that the case schedule had to be elongated because "The parties will have to do some discovery overseas", which I presume means that Bandai Namco's Japanese division is getting involved - and if that's the case, its a good thing. Namco of Japan is the one who signed this royalty agreement, intentionally disguised as a full rights turnover agreement, in nineteen-eighty-fucking-three. They know more about it than anyone, and could outright prove its deceiving nature. But we still don't know for sure, and likely won't for months on end. New information on the case will likely come to a complete halt at this point. But the moment anything new happens, I'll be sure to update here again. (And to the kids reading: make sure you ask your parents to return any AtGames products you receive on Christmas. Dig the receipt out of the trash, if you have to. Do it for Pac-Man!) UPDATE 1/24/20: For the past few weeks, Namco had been begging the court to let them respond to/disprove claims made in AtGames' response to them. They eventually agreed, and Namco updated their initial court document to have several more pages added. If Namco is to be believed, practically everything AtGames said in their response was a complete lie. For example, AtGames claimed that Namco approved a Ms. Pac-Man plug & play of theirs...except said plug & play never existed. Namco said they would review it and consider licensing it, but AtGames never even developed the damn thing. While most of the other changes are just talking about more stupid plug & plays, there is one line in this document that is VERY important, and likely VERY bad for AtGames: "AtGames has also breached its obligation to timely provide Namco Entertainment America with royalty reports during the term of the contract pursuant to ... the 2018 Agreement. In fact, AtGames has not provided any royalty reports to BNEA for the 2019 calendar year. Further, following BNEA’s termination of the 2018 Agreement, AtGames has failed to comply with its obligations under ... the 2018 Agreement." Now, I am not 100% certain on this. Legal terms are confusing, and there aren't textbook definitions for them. But to my understanding, this means NAMCO was not paid royalties for AtGames' Pac-Man plug & plays. The company who is demanding Namco to pay royalties based on a confusing 40-year old agreement...was not paying Namco's own royalties from a simple 1-year old agreement. Holy. Fucking. Shit. It would be EXTREMELY hypocritical for the court to not give back the Ms. Pac-Man rights to Namco from this alone. What AtGames has done is the exact equivalent of what Namco accidentally did, but instead was done intentionally. Things are looking brighter in this case for Namco; hopefully it will stay that way. Ireallydontcare123456789 (talk) 20:29, November 20, 2019 (UTC)ireallydontcare123456789 Category:Blog posts